CitizenSkyView intended to support renewable energy forecasting

It may be the ideal citizen science project for a community where so many enjoy gazing at the sky.

A team at the University of Colorado Center for Environmental Technology is teaming with Boulder's National Center for Atmospheric Research and NASA on what's known as CitizenSkyView. It's all about getting to know the clouds that drift overhead — and their impact on renewable energy — much better.

"This started about eight years ago, in fact, when we saw the possibility of low-cost digital cameras and the internet, and the need for better prediction of renewable energy — in other words, better prediction of when our solar panels would be producing power," said Professor Al Gasiewski, the center's director and the project's lead investigator.

"We saw the availability of wireless in an entire community like Boulder, radiating from everybody's houses, as a unique means of communicating pictures. And we saw the need to predict whether my solar panels, or your solar panels, or Xcel's, or anybody's solar arrays, are going to be producing power," he said. "If we are going to be improving the amount of energy we're going to get from solar, we've got to be able to better predict it."

Fueled by an initial $10,000 seed grant from CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, which was followed by a NASA grant of about $180,000, the team developed the CitizenSkyView app for iPhones or androids, then set out to enlist community volunteers.

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The required app is available through both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

On three Saturdays late last year, those volunteers were sent out to preselected locations around Boulder to turn on the App, put down their phones for an hour and let their phones' cameras do the rest.

During those data collection events, the apps automatically took pictures of the sky every 30 seconds, enabling scientists to create high resolution of the data for clouds as they formed and moved across the sky.

"The best photo of me participating in the event is me laying on the grass in the middle of Chautauqua Park and reading a book and munching a sandwich, with my camera next to me on a rock taking pictures," Gasiewski recalled.

An 'almost' partnership with Xcel

The data that is gathered is "stitched" together, researchers said, to produce, for the first time, three-dimensional cloud imagery.

"I think the ability to map out cloud structure from the bottom, and be able to deduce something about the vertical structure from a series of citizen-science-based cameras using their iPhones, is an interesting prospect for mapping out more generally clouds in the future," said Andy Heymsfield, co-investigator on the project and a senior scientist at NCAR's Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory.

"This won't only be restricted to the Boulder area, but the hope is to have it spread over a wider area," he said.

"There are two areas where this can really benefit. One would be for the estimating of, or inferring the needs of, solar charging stations. And the second would be to help in interpreting satellite data."

NCAR, he said, is involved both in choosing sites for the placement of the project's cameras, and also putting together the cloud imagery base on the collected data.

The CitizenSkyView researchers engaged in talks as far back as 2010 with Xcel Energy to enlist the utility's support of the project, and those discussions "almost" resulted in funding from Xcel, Gasiewski said.

A greater understanding of cloud structure, as a critical tool to forecasting cloud formation, can be key for utilities and providers of renewable energy to what is known as power grid load leveling, Gasiewski said.

"That's something that energy companies are concerned about," he said. "There are going to be certain amounts of energy for renewables that they have to make up for by burning more coal or natural gas or buying electricity at higher rates from other sources, if they can't predict" solar energy availability.

"And now that we want to get renewables in Boulder to levels of 40 percent and higher, it's becoming even more critical that we can predict the energy that will be produced."

'The more the merrier'

In the busy workspace that the CitizenSkyView team occupies at CU's Department for Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering sits a prototype of the CitizenSkyCam, a unit the project members hope to deploy to rooftops across Boulder County, enabling a steady stream of the same data on clouds that is currently gathered intermittently by the phone apps.

Boulder officials have expressed interest in hosting a few permanent CitizenSkyView cameras, as has NCAR. The scientists are looking for homeowners who will also allow the units — weighing no more than about 100 pounds and requiring nothing elaborate for roof installation — to sit atop their houses.

"And I think there are about 100 sites around town that we're targeting to fill out," said Michael Hurowtiz, a member of the Center for Environmental Technology and a CitizenSkyView team member. "And we had maybe 30 percent covered last time, so the more the merrier.

"Finding permanent locations, as well as volunteers for the individual (phone-based) events, definitely could be very helpful for us, where it's just the one hour. And also for the longer term, finding homes for these as we build them up."

For homeowners who want to be a part of the project and host a CitizenSkyCam atop their houses, Gasiewski said, "Your neighbors might look at it and wonder what the little spaceship is that's up on your roof. And, you will perhaps lose about 1 percent of your internet bandwidth — a small, miniscule fraction."

As for the upside, he added, "Volunteers will have access to all the cloud pictures in real time if they wish. Volunteers will have access to the cloud forecasts, to know if the sun will be shining on them in the next hour or two. And volunteers will be part of a civic project, doing good to promote renewable energy in the Boulder County area."

Nearly three dozen CU engineering students have contributed to the project since its inception.

Meanwhile, several more hourlong data collection events are envisioned for the months ahead, with the next one expected to take place in February. Phone-carrying volunteers should contact the project team at citizensky@colorado.edu. Those throughout Boulder County with roof space and an interest in helping can contact the same address.

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